


we belong to the narrative

by TheRighteousPie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Female Dean Winchester, Gen, Impala, Pre-Series, Weechesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 12:36:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3249932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRighteousPie/pseuds/TheRighteousPie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six years prior to baby Deanna first being soothed by the rumble of Baby’s engine, John Winchester buys a 1967 Chevy Impala on the advice of a smooth talking woman with grease under her fingernails and blood in her teeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we belong to the narrative

**Author's Note:**

> this is just a little drabble inspired by Dean's monologue in "Girls, Girls, Girls" about how everyone has a story to keep them going. First time posting/writing fanfiction.

On April 24th, 1967 a black Chevy Impala rolls off a production line in Janesville, Wisconsin.  


Twelve years later Deanna Winchester kicks her feet from the safety of her car seat and mimics the purr of Baby’s engine on the tip of her lips. Deanna knows nothing of the cars history, knows only that it smells of leather and sounds like home. She won’t remember this moment, lost to the fragility of infant memory. But Baby will.  


Six years prior to baby Deanna first being soothed by the rumble of Baby’s engine, John Winchester buys a 1967 Chevy Impala on the advice of a smooth talking woman with grease under her fingernails and blood in her teeth. He will recognize a weight in her gaze, feel a kinship in his heart, and though he really does want to buy Mary the car of her dreams, something about the sleek lines of the Impala will call to him.  


On November 2nd, 1983 with ash in his mouth and his baby son in his shaking arms John Winchester sits on the hood of a vehicle he bought on the recommendation of a smooth talking woman with grease under her fingernails and blood in her teeth and feels the weight of his daughter’s head against his elbow. He doesn't know that she is destined to be the Righteous Man, or that his baby son is even now being changed by the demon blood in his throat. What John Winchester does know is that grief tastes like ash on his tongue and blood on his hands, and that the price for knowledge is safety. He is willing to pay.  


In a broken down motel room in Fort Douglas, Indiana Deanna Winchester meets her father’s eyes with a shotgun hanging useless from one hand and regret and fear vying for equal positioning on her tongue. John is hugging Sammy against the too-fast beat of his faltering heart and as he meet’s his daughter’s eyes from where even now she is still standing uselessly in the doorway with her borrowed shotgun hanging from her clean little hands he thinks “weak”. He never really stops thinking this, and Deanna can never stop hearing it.  


The drive to Bobby’s is silent and full of double speared recriminations. Deanna does not forget. John does not forgive. Baby learns.  
John’s children stay with Bobby through the winter.  


(That winter John meets a woman named Kate. Her hair reminds him of Mary, but her face is different enough he can ignore that he has two kids waiting for him back in Sioux Falls. He leaves his number on her nightstand. He forgets until she calls about a son named Adam, and maybe would he like to visit? As it turns out, John would.)  


The summer after the Shtriga, Deanna learns to shoot without hesitation. John does not take her on a hunt. He does not leave her alone with Sammy. She has lost that trust. Instead he sets up cans for her in abandoned fields and watches her shoot until she can systematically whip through every target he invents. She earns the trust back slowly, quietly. She starts asking him about his hunts again, soaking up the information he lays down for her like it is her birthright. He teaches her how to fix the impala, show her how to make things work. He teaches her to make do with what you got, quick jiffy fixes to get the car up and running, how to get out of a jam fast. He teaches her to stay alive. That’s all he’s ever tried to teach his kids. Sometimes, when he comes back from a hunt, energy drained, eyes vacant for having witnessed horrors come to life, when all he can really do is sit on the edge of whatever seating is on offer in their latest hotel room, Deanna puts one careful hand on his shoulder and tells him it will be okay. Her quiet reassurance is more than he is owed from his children. This burden is one she should not have to carry. Most of Deanna’s burdens are more than she should rightfully bear. But John is a weak man, and his need for vengeance can really only carry him so far. His story is getting weaker every day that ends with no leads on the thing that killed Mary, and weak stories can only last for so long.  


The story unravels, (it has to) but they keep moving on. Baby carries them across the country and Deanna absorbs her father’s narrative. Sam rejects the narrative, rides a bus with a duffle bag and vindication and not much else on his way to California. John reweaves the story in Sammy’s absence, fills up the blanks with self-righteousness and sour whiskey. The absence grates on Deanna. The story is more of a burden than a driving force and these four years are spent with blood in her teeth and grease under her fingernails. She gets by with quick roadside fixes, surviving on the lessons John taught her.  


Later, after Sam comes back from Stanford, they reweave the story into a legend. Legends have more strength to withstand unraveling.


End file.
